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The Causation Recipe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Yehudah Freundlich
Yehudah Freundlich
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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Extract

In a Recent article [9], Alexander Rosenberg attacks the “manipulative” view of causation as being unilluminating and as being beset with difficulties. As a proponent of that view [3], I have felt it necessary to take up cudgels in its defence.

Rosenberg's criticisms are directed at Gasking's version of this view [5]. Gasking's recipe for causation is, “one says ‘A causes B’ in cases where one could produce an event of the A sort as a means to producing one of the B sort” (p. 485). Here it is taken for granted that we have general manipulative techniques for producing events of the A sort and that this is implicitly assumed when one speaks of A as a cause. There is one qualification to this formula for causes which arises from the necessity for individuating processes, namely, that, for A to be the cause of B, it must not always lead to B (for then the technique for producing A would also be a B-producing one), but only in special cases.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 472 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1977

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References

REFERENCES

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